The Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday it was implementing a number of traffic initiatives to deal with employee furloughs under sequestration. It warned those changes likely would result in a "wide range of delays that will change throughout the day depending on staffing and weather-related issues."

While airports such as Newark and Washington's Reagan National were seeing "excessive" delays by late afternoon, according to flightstats.com, for many airports the delays weren't as severe as they had been Monday.

Flightstats.com said more than half the flights at LaGuardia Airport in New York City experienced delays on Monday, and that four in 10 flights at Newark had been delayed.

On Tuesday, Mike Elmendorf, president and CEO of Assoicated General Contractors of New York, spent 30 minutes sitting on the tarmac at Albany International Airport for a flight that usually takes little more than an hour.

"It's not just about inconvenience," he said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon. "It's about economic impact. When you slow down air travel you're slowing down the economy."

Elmendorf is familiar with the impact the federal spending cuts are having in his role at the contractors' organization.

"You're talking about as much as $4 billion in cuts to federal construction," he said. "That's about 120,000 jobs. Those are real numbers."

The FAA estimated that more than 1,200 delays nationwide on Monday were the result of staff furloughs, while an additional 1,400 delays could be blamed on weather and other factors.

Flightstats.com said nationwide, nearly 7,000 flights were delayed on Monday.

The sequester comes as security at airports and train stations has been tightened in the wake of the Boston bombings and the arrest of two people in Canada who allegedly planned to attack a U.S.-bound passenger train.